Amplicon Liveline has recently released its new PCI236, 24 channel Digital I/O board for PCI bus, an update to the PC36AT product, priced at the extremely low cost of £99
Amplicon Liveline has recently released its new PCI236, 24 channel Digital I/O (DIO) board for PCI bus, an update to the PC36AT product.
Priced at the extremely low cost of £99, the new board is backwardly compatible with the popular PC36AT for the ISA bus.
It features an on board facility for DIO signal conditioning and utilises the new PCI-ISA interface chip to reduce cost.
As the board is a low cost entry level product, it is ideal for the education market.
The on board signal conditioning is one of the first of such features on a DIO board, which the user is able to develop or for which Amplicon can supply bespoke modules.
This feature can help in electrically noisy environments, with typical modules that could be incorporated onto the board including high current output; resistor capacitor filtered input; Schmitt input; opto-isolated input or opto-isolated output.
In addition to the benefits listed above, an 82C55 CMOS programmable peripheral interface (PPI) is used.
Operations can be interrupt controlled, with the facility for the interrupts to be generated from one external signal.
The device uses a PCI bus version 2.1 plug and play interface, and the driver software is compatible with Windows NT, 95, 98 and 2000.
HP VEE and Visual Basic example programs are also made available.
The board is ideal for any application that requires a simple input and output control via a PC, also for monitoring the status of alarms, external contact relays and for providing simple on-off control.
This new board is part of the 200 series of data acquisition and serial communications boards that Amplicon offer, bringing together a complete system and driver development from the company, helping to ease system integration and future upgrades.
Two further devices are planned, a 72 channel DIO board and a 48 channel DIO and 6 counter timers.
The device meets CE requirements for EMC, and full pre and post sales support is available from Amplicon.
Company information Amplicon Liveline manufactures and distributes data acquisition, signal conditioning, instrumentation, power supplies, industrial computing, compact PCI, industrial communications and test and measurement products for applications in industry, research and higher education.
